Social distancing doesn’t work. We need healthcare without harm.

Social distancing, lockdowns, travel bans, and quarantines because of concern over the novel coronavirus are not strategies that promote public health. They aren’t substantiated by public health research. I believe there are better alternatives to social distancing. There are healthcare measures we can take that are more effective, more equitable, less expensive, less violent, and less isolating.

Social distancing is supposed to be about “flattening the curve.” Its goal is not to reduce the total number of deaths from COVID-19 (called case fatality), but to reduce case severity and hospitalization over time. This assumption is that our more limited interactions will lessen the degree to which individual people will get sick and the number of sick people hospitalized at one time. But what if social distancing achieves neither of those objectives?

We keep talking about the number of ventilators that are available. Ventilators are being distributed through bidding systems, in which hospital suppliers bid against each other and supplies go to the highest bidder. This practice is criminal from an ethical viewpoint, but is “normal” for how our society works. That is not public health!

Social distancing hurts people socially, economically, physically, and psychologically. Many Americans are already too socially isolated and don’t get enough exercise and outdoor movement. Many of us are living on the edge economically. Many of us are already feeling politically disempowered. Younger adults, especially, are more anxious and fearful than ever before. Most of us worry that our opinions don’t matter. Being isolated from others, told we should not hug our friends or shake each other’s hands, and urged to practice social distancing worsens these existing problems.

Moreover, many of the negative effects of socially distancing are unequally distributed. Social distancing leaves people who are already disadvantaged even worse off. Wealthier people can afford to work from home and “stock up” on essentials, but most lower and middle class Americans often don’t have the job security, internet access, or opportunity to work remotely. Half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Fifty to 70 million people are expected to be unemployed by the end of April 2020. Many are losing their health insurance. We are already seeing a rise in suicides as people grapple with their losses.

Food as medicine should be our starting point. But instead people have less food access than ever before. America was already a hungry nation. Now, demand at food banks has increased. We’re all worried: Will there be food shortages?

Social distancing and hate foster panic, not public health

People who aren’t practicing social distancing are being vilified, decried as “selfish,” “narcissistic,” and “ableists” for their purported unwillingness to sacrifice for others. We are now imagining each individual as a walking bio-weapon, whether that person is in robust health, has the common cold, or is actually infected with coronavirus. We are now living in fear of other humans and seeing everyone around us as walking health hazards. That’s not how I want to think of my friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

Many chiropractors, acupuncturists, physical therapists, and other health providers have closed. They are not seeing clients, some of whom are themselves health providers. All healthcare providers are trained in mental health support. When we cancel personal health options, we impact public health.

Social distancing is a mental health nightmare. People who need their friends and healthcare providers are separated. People’s emotional stress is very high: panic, fear, grief, loss, and anxiety are more widespread than coronavirus and adversely impact health. Some people are stuck inside with their abusers. I am alarmed by the people who are at home drinking alcohol and succumbing to other addiction habits because they lost their social supports. Teens and young people are depressed about not graduating and not having their part-time jobs; they don’t qualify for unemployment.

Social control, coercion, and hate do not foster public health.

Public health officials, educators, and politicians are telling us we must be obsessively clean. They are disinfecting entire schools, recommending the use of hand sanitizer, and suggesting we bleach our lives. Yet the cleaning strategies being rigorously promoted also aren’t helping. Like social distancing, this obsession with cleanliness may be harmful to our personal, public, and environmental health.

Washing your hands frequently with harsh chemicals is terrible for your skin. Our skin is our primary protection against germs. Toxic chemicals being used to kill germs contain immunosuppressants and endocrine disruptors. These substances can harm the immune system; many products, such as chlorine bleach, cause adverse health effects in production, use, and disposal.

Our “democratic” government and private sectors are using new powers to shutdown borders, enforce quarantines and lock downs, and collect personal data. Police pull cars over on the roads to interrogate the drivers and passengers, and in some areas, they can be held without bond for violating stay-at-home orders. In other countries, police have beaten people up for being on the streets. Digital surveillance has expanded to adversely impact human rights far into the future. Are we so concerned about social distancing that we are giving up political, civil, and labor rights?

What we should be doing is emphasizing vitalism and using germ theory in the context of holistic health.

Vitalism is a paradigm for public action to achieve public health that emphasizes the fundamental vitality of our own bodies in the face of germs. Public actions should promote actual health based on what we know makes our bodies healthier, not based on the needs of a for-profit health industry.

A tax on all products containing refined sugar would help us fight coronavirus and many other health problems, including diabetes, tooth decay, and even heart disease. Sugar exposures reduce the immune system by 50% for many hours.

Subsidizing fresh fruit for everyone so that even poor people can benefit from essential nutrients for immunity would be another excellent strategy. We should subsidize a variety of health products and services. Vitamin C supplementation is effective against a spectrum of viral, bacterial, and fungal infections, not just coronavirus. The government could subsidize products for everyone, or at least for vulnerable populations.

The importance of peace of mind, hydration, and movement for health and wellbeing could be promoted. Clinical and laboratory studies around the world suggest that antiviral herbs—available locally in our bioregions—are effective in strengthening the immune system against a spectrum of viruses. We can empower people to strengthen their bodies to live with a community of viruses and other pathogens that shape and define the human condition. We need not wait for a commercial vaccine to do what improving nutrition, hygiene, and sanitation can do better.

A vitalistic approach would include mutual aid networks so that people who need care can connect with people who offer care. We can choose to meet each other with deep respect and connection—as well as with hugs. Most people prefer solidarity over suspicion.

Free testing for coronavirus exposure and immunity, and universal healthcare

And, really, why aren’t we providing free testing? People who actually need to quarantine themselves should and could. Testing and self-isolating are two strategies used in South Korea and Sweden, where the coronavirus is doing much less damage than elsewhere. This testing should be confidential and anonymous, so we can make our own choices about our own bodies, and not risk harassment in our communities.

And, why are we not testing for antibodies? If we tested for antibodies in the general population, we might even find that many people have been exposed, were asymptomatic, and have recovered. People who have been exposed to the novel coronavirus and recovered can be promoted to the “frontlines” in various industries, especially in healthcare. Immunity, we may find, could last for several years. What if most of the population has already built up resistance to this novel virus? Scientific models show this situation is likely. Also, coronaviruses tend to evolve to become less severe and less fatal. Why not assume that COVID-19 infections will evolve like other viruses in its class?

The healthcare industry, which makes a big impact on the infection rate, is not doing what they can. Hospitals aren’t isolating COVID-19 patients from other patients; doctors and nurses who test positive for COVID-19 are still working with healthy patients; they aren’t using air filters in hospital rooms; and, telemedicine solutions are not being implemented.

And, our data are horrible. Anyone who dies of any respiratory illness in a hospital is counted as having COVID-19 without testing. People who die from some other cause, such as a stroke or pancreatic cancer, are counted among COVID-19 fatalities if they also test positive for COVID19, even if they had no symptoms. This practice inflates fatality rates, which are being announced by media outlets on a case-by-case basis, contributing to widespread panic. It comes at a time when fatality rates from respiratory illnesses have been increasing globally for years.

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But instead of scientifically grounded evidence-based practices, in America we are creating a social crisis and an economic crisis, in addition to the ongoing health crisis and the climate crisis. We have created the Global Financial Crisis of 2020, causing harm everywhere.

The expansive paradigm of vitalism suggests that everyone deserves healthcare and an income. Universal healthcare and a universal basic income could be passed on an experimental basis right now. It would help the most individuals, improving public health and the economy. There are efforts to give people hazard pay. Truly, respect for human rights is essential to a public health response.

I say NO to healthcare based on fear, police power, coercion, and widespread collateral damage. I say NO to a single story that social distancing is the only thing we can do.

I say YES to healthcare and an economy based on equality, informed consent, free health testing, social connection, and the fundamental vitality of our own bodies.

Wash your hands with soap and water, yes. AND let’s have justice, equity, and compassion too. I prefer my healthcare without harm.

About the author: Caitlin Waddick, Ph.D., has graduate degrees in urban and regional planning. She has expertise in environmental health, housing, healthy communities, colonialism, food justice, social and environmental valuation, solidarity economics, conservation, and science and technology studies. She is involved in the cooperative movement, the permaculture and agroecology movements, and the health freedom movement. She has participated in many of the United Nations conferences on climate change, most recently COP25, marching with the Extinction Rebellion. She is also an amateur herbalist, a feminist, a prison abolitionist, an anti-racist, a Unitarian Universalist, and an optimist promoting #BoundlessRegenerativeCulture (#CulturaRegenerativeAbundante). She tracks her reading and media across a variety of diversity metrics. Her goal is to read a book by an author from every country in the world and hear music from every corner of space and time.

Comments

Great Caitlin, and let’s also add that MUSIC IS MEDICINE! Instead of canceling all the concerts and dances we should be Increasing them for they bring health, healing & joy
Watch my music concerts on my most recent Face Book page, (the one with pic of me and Holly!)

Interesting point of view but with several flawed assumptions. This is a virulent, extremely contagious disease, not some cold that we can avoid by eating right and meditating. Herd immunity has not been proven with this virus; in fact data shows that people can be reinfected as seen in Asian studies. The death statistics from Covid19 are actually under reported, since many have not been tested for the virus at the time of their death and reporting standards have required verification. In fact, it has recently come to light in belated autopsy tests that people who died previous to the earliest reported outbreaks actually were infected with the corona virus and that it had been in the population undetected earlier than perviously known. Until a vaccine is developed to at least lessen the effects of the corona virus, it appears that using masks and socially distancing ourselves is the remedy of least resistance. And if you are also against vaccinations, you are too young and idealistic to have lived through friends and relatives with polio or diphtheria, with protected herd immunity giving you a false sense of security. Because you are right, personal space is not an option in crowded living conditions of the least economically well off or homeless populations, or indigenous cultures world-wide that are vastly different from the protected life styles of the relatively more affluent members of our American society.

Deborah: Please check *your* assumptions.
(1) Coronaviruses as a category evolve on their own to cause less deadly symptoms. This evolution is how the 1918 flu pandemic ended, not through some miraculous, mass vaccination program. This evolution and previous pandemic experience supports letting people get infected and targeting our supportive efforts to those who most need it, not a blanket, one-size-fits-all, social distancing approach.
(2) You are right that this coronavirus is extremely contagious. It is so contagious that increasing scientific evidence suggests that this novel coronavirus was widespread well before our lockdowns began. In fact, one study shows the same outcomes for places that had lockdowns as those places that didn’t have lockdowns. These identical results for differing policy approaches are easily explained. The virus does not spread exponentially forever and ever within a population. The period of exponential growth in infections lasts about 2 weeks, then the infection rates slow, whether or not social distancing is implemented. Please look for the article reviewing this study in the Times of Israel. Also, I did read about recent efforts in the US to exhume bodies of people who died of flu-like illnesses, but who tested negative for the flu in January and February; tissue samples show they had COVID19. Moreover, the doctors who treated them at the time are now treating confirmed COVID19 patients, and they believe their patients with flu-like symptoms died of COVID19. The right time for contact tracing and individual quarantines was long past by March 2020, which is all the more reason to end lockdowns now. [Additionally, it suggests a source of data that we have yet to tap: the anecdotal experiences of local doctors everywhere. They see more patients with a range of symptoms than doctors at hospitals who are treating the worst cases.]
(3) Scientific efforts to develop vaccines for coronaviruses and certain other viruses have failed because they tended to increase, not decrease, people’s infection rates. The New York Times and other mainstream media ran stories about this pattern in vaccine development. This novel coronavirus may have other features that make an efficacious vaccine for it highly unlikely. Don’t expect a technological fix soon. (Moreover, current plans for testing vaccines on poor people in India are outrageously unethical.)
(4) More people will die due to social distancing efforts than from coronavirus. I read in the NYT and/or the BBC last night that 586 million people are hungry. You may have also read about the food waste. And, food prices for some categories of food are increasing.
(5) The NYT had an article about black mothers in Detroit with children, with coronavirus, who do not have water to wash their hands, which is a primary way to prevent disease transmission. Targeting the most vulnerable in our society could have helped everyone a lot more than our one-size-fits-all, social distancing approach.
(6) Eating right and meditating have been shown scientifically to boost immunity. Social distancing does not boost immunity; it decreases it by inducing stress. Scientific studies support these claims.
(7) The death statistics from COVID19 are highly over-reported, not underreported. Many people are posting online that their friend or relative died of causes unrelated to COVID19, such from a stroke, but the death was counted as a COVID19 death because the person, who was asymptomatic of COVID19, tested positive for it at the time of death. These reports inflate death rates. Also, respiratory illnesses have been increasing; medical examiners are instructed to report COVID19 as the cause of death for all respiratory illnesses, regardless of their testing status, as reported in the mainstream media.

A couple observations: firstly, virulence does not equal severity and why would this virus “magically” be able to re-infect an individual-this underscores a fundamental lack of understanding of our immune system and it’s ability to develop immunity.

I’m going to address one very important misconception from your writing, specifically you stated, ”…And if you are also against vaccinations, you are too young and idealistic to have lived through friends and relatives with polio or diphtheria, with protected herd immunity giving you a false sense of security…”

While I am not anti-vaccine, I am against healthcare that induces illness, which so many of our currently available vaccinations have been shown to do. I understand how these interventions are developed, inadequately tested and in fact are not protective. I worked on the inside of the BioPharmaceutical industry, as a researcher and healthcare professional for over 20 years. Additionally, I am neither “too young“ nor ”idealistic“ and have lived through decades watching our failing healthcare system enrich those creating and administering the cures— all the while individuals health (as evidenced by our nations health statistics), go down the tubes.

Many vaccinations have been shown to have the presence of glyphosate, a highly toxic synthetic shown to be a carcinogen, not to mention the inclusion of adjuvants such as metals—mercury and lead, as well as the amplification of their effects by passing them through a variety on animal species such as chickens and pigs. WHY do we accept this as the norm? WHY? I’m appalled by the lack of common sense that is currently being employed in the name of safety— this is not only about the marginalized citizen— this is about ALL of our health—it’s time we demand answers.